Simon Cameron

Simon Cameron (8 March 1799-26 June 1889) was a US Senator from Pennsylvania from 13 March 1845 to 3 March 1849 (succeeding James Buchanan and preceding James Cooper), from 4 March 1857 to 4 March 1861 (succeeding Richard Brodhead and preceding David Wilmot), and from 4 March 1867 to 12 March 1877 (succeeding Edgar Cowan and preceding J. Donald Cameron), as well as Secretary of War from 5 March 1861 to 14 January 1862 (succeeding Joseph Holt and preceding Edwin Stanton).

Biography
Simon Cameron was born in Maytown, Pennsylvania in 1799, and he worked as a printer, serving as state printer from 1825 to 1827. He later invested in other businesses, and he supported the Democratic presidential campaigns of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. From 1845 to 1849, he served in the US Senate as a Democrat, but, as a persistent opponent of slavery, he later defected to the Know Nothings and then to the Republican Party. At the 1860 Republican National Convention, he supported Abraham Lincoln, and he served as Secretary of War from 1861 to 1862. However, his tenure was filled with corruption allegations and mismanagement, and he was replaced by Edwin Stanton. In 1862, he briefly served as ambassador to Russia. From 1867 to 1877, he returned to the Senate, building a powerful political machine that would control Pennsylvania politics for the next seventy years. He resigned from the Senate in 1877, conditional upon his son J. Donald Cameron succeeding him. He died in 1889.